The use of robotic systems in industrial applications often requires careful monitoring of the robots and other associated components due to the complexity in programming, operating, and maintaining such systems. For instance, an operator of a robotic system may want continual access to information regarding the robotic system including a current status of each robot or component in use with the system, a production status of the robotic system, a summary of process information, and diagnostics information.
In many instances, an operator of such robotic systems may be responsible for several different independent robotic systems dispersed at various different locations within a single customer site or even across multiple customer sites. Accordingly, it is advantageous to be able to monitor such systems using a portable smart device such as a mobile phone or a laptop computer, for instance.
The ability to constantly monitor multiple robotic systems and the components included therein greatly increases the efficiency in operating such a robotic system. The availability of detailed information relating to the current condition or production status of each robot within the robotic system allows the operator of the robotic system to make faster and more informed decisions. Furthermore, up to date information relating to the condition of each robot allows the operator to schedule routine or unexpected maintenance in a much more efficient and time effective manner.
Systems for monitoring and displaying robot related information are known in the art. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 8,121,729 “Remote Diagnostic System for Robots” and US patent application publication No 2011/0173496 “Intelligent Condition Monitoring and Fault Diagnostics System for Preventive Maintenance” each disclose a method of monitoring a robotic system remotely.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,121,729 describes a remote diagnostic system for robots including at least two robots, wherein a controller of each robot of the system is locally connected to a service unit provided with local processing power. A remote service center is provided with a connector server, and a communications infrastructure for transferring packets of information between the robot controllers and the connector server via the service units for performing remote monitoring and diagnostics at the remote service center. The communications infrastructure uses Internet and/or GPRS (general packet radio service) communication lines.
Publication 2011/0173496 describes a system for condition monitoring and fault diagnosis that includes a data collection function that acquires time histories of selected variables for one or more of the components, a pre-processing function that calculates specified characteristics of the time histories, an analysis function for evaluating the characteristics to produce one or more hypotheses of a condition of the one or more components, and a reasoning function for determining the condition of the one or more components from the one or more hypotheses. In this system, the function controller collects data packets from the robot controller via various communication methods to a remote server. The information is aggregated and analyzed on the server.
The prior art robot monitoring system have several shortcomings. The service unit in the system of U.S. Pat. No. 8,121,729 is required to gather data from the associated robot. Conceptually, the service unit acts as the master of the data and requests data from the robot controller (slave). The remote service center is utilized to make the analysis. This often requires the use of an independent third-party remote server. The user of the robot system therefore does not have direct control of the server being used to monitor the robot system. Similarly, the system of Publication 2011/0173496 requires multiple controllers to collect and analyze the data and again a remote server is utilized to make the analysis. In contrast, the use of a local server to collect and analyze the data allows the customer and owner of the local server to control the data and monitor and control the access to this data.
Furthermore, the reliance of the prior art robot monitoring systems on third party controlled remote servers in many instances leads to an inability of the customer to customize the types of robot related data being monitoring by the system. This type of inflexible system leads to the customer not being able to prioritize certain types of notifications over others, or causes the system to be unable to provide information with each notification that may be deemed important by the operator of such a system.
It is desirable, therefore, to provide a localized customer server that is able to securely store and communicate data to the customer without the need for a third-party remote server while offering the customer the ability to customize the types and forms of data available for remote notification.